Illegal immigrants and land stealing

[packman]

An interactive map, showing historical land captures from 1776 to present day

http://invasionofamerica.ehistory.org/#0


and the article itself highlighting the reasoning, power, and philosophy whites used to soothe their conscience while displacing, slaughtering and being hypocritical about the entire process.

http://aeon.co/magazine/society/americans-must-not-forget-their-history-of-dispossession/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AeonMagazineEssays+%28Aeon+Magazine+Essays%29

[Cleita]

1. I have always felt we have to compensate the indigenous people of this country for the

European invasion. However, this is not the sole responsibility of the USA. The French (Louisiana Purchase), the Spanish (American Southwest) and the Russians (Alaska) need to add to this. So how should we do it? Should we return land or give recompense in money?

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

2. Then we would have to compensate two entirely

different groups of people - Native Americans and the land we take from present day Americans to give back to them. After a certain period of time, that is not a likely possibility.

A certain land dispute in the Middle East comes to mind.

[hfojvt]

7. we have been paying compensation for years

and who should we compensate?

Should we compensate the Kiowa and the Crows for the Black Hills, or do we compensate the Sioux who pushed out the Kiowa and Crows (at least if you can believe Dee Brown) without any sort of compensation?

"South of the Kansas-Nebraska buffalo ranges were the Kiowas. Some of the older Kiowas could remember the Black Hills, but the tribe had been pushed southward before the combined power of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. By 1860 the Kiowas had made peace with the northern plains tribes and had become allies of the Comanches, whose southern plains they had entered." (BMH pp 10-11)

"Although the Sioux were hereditary enemies of the Crows and had
driven them from their rich hunting grounds, Red Cloud himself
had recently made a conciliatory visit in hopes of persuading them
to join his Indian alliance ..." (BMH p 133)

Should we compensate the Sauk and Fox for taking Saukenuk from them (and paying for it with cash, livestock and over 400 square miles of land in Iowa).

Here's Blackhawk writing about how that village was founded. "They all descended Rock river - drove the Kas-kas-kias from the country, and commenced the erection of their village, determined never to leave it." (BA p 46)

How much payment did they give to the Kaskaskias again? Was it bupkus? Why yes, I think it was.

And what about the Apache, who invaded Colorado about the same time as Columbus infamous voyage?

"The Apaches of the region of southern Arizona found their one irreconcilable foe in the Pima, this being Pima country which the Apaches had INVADED. The Apaches centering in northeastern Arizona were on terms of basic hostility with such nearby people as those of Zuni and the later pueblo of Laguna (founded 1699), for the same basic reason: invasion or trespass. The word Apache, from a Zuni word meaning enemy ..." (Indians p. 353 (emphasis mine))

"Often, however, rather than trading, the Apacheans simply attacked Pueblo or Piman communities and took what they wanted - food, and sometimes slaves - by force. For the generally peaceful farmers, these raids were a terrifying intrusion which compelled them to fortify or move their settlements and engendered a deep hatred for the Dineh." (The Earth Shall Weep p 182)

Here's another example from Wilson, mentioning how much the government paid to just one small tribe.

"Before Termination, for example, the Menominee - who, like the Klamath, paid for virtually all their own services - cost Washington a mere $144,000 a year; by 1966, five years after withdrawal, the federal and state governments between them had spent a total of more than $6 million implementing the new policy and trying to deal with the chaos it created." (pp 375-76)

Yeah, in 1962 a mere $144,000 a year just for the Menominee, in 2014 dollars that is $1.13 million - every year. But then because of a policy change it cost $1.2 million a year for five years Or $44 million in today's money for the five years.

It's hard to get any sort of total, but clearly there has been at least a little bit of money spent trying to help the Native Americans (sometimes in admittedly counter-productive ways). In the meantime life was a picnic for the white settlers.

"In early Plains farming, hardship was extreme. The grasshoppers would have been nightmare enough. They came in clouds, sounding like hail on a house, sometimes covering the ground four to six inches deep; they could stop trains; and they ate indiscriminately." (The Legacy of Conquest p 126)

"The cost of a house, draft animals, wagon, plow, well, fencing, and seed grain could be as much as $1,000; many farmers succeeded on less than that, but they made up the difference in privation and hard labor." (op cit p 125)

Not to mention the money they make from gambling by virtue of being exempt from many US laws.

Clearly some of them still need help to be lifted out of poverty, but general free money based on race rather than need doesn't seem fair to me.

[Nye Bevan]

3. Some of the land, at least, was purchased as opposed to being "stolen".

The purchase of Staten Island a few decades later has more surviving documentation, including the deed, which says the Dutch traded “10 boxes of shirts, 10 ells of red cloth, 30 pounds of powder, 30 pairs of socks, 2 pieces of duffel, some awls, 10 muskets, 30 kettles, 25 adzes, 10 bars of lead, 50 axes and some knives.” If the Manhattan trade was made with similar goods, the Native Americans got less shafted than legend implies, and received 60 guilders worth of useful equipment and what was high-end technology at the time.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/12657/was-manhattan-really-bought-24

Yes, this seems in retrospect like a very good deal, but so does the Alaska purchase. Should we go back and give Russia more money because we got Alaska on the cheap?

[nichomachus]

4. The first "illegal immigrants"

were the Pilgrims. They had a warrant to go to Virginia, but not Massachusetts. They went off course and stayed in MA anyway. But first, they landed at Provincetown on Cape Cod. They never met the Indians there, but they found the Indians' stash of winter corn. So they stole it, and then moved on to Plymouth.

We celebrate those two illegal acts every year.

[Nye Bevan]

5. At that time, did the natives have established immigration laws?

Which truly made the Pilgrims "illegal immigrants"?

Or did they tacitly assent to the Pilgrims staying in MA?

[nichomachus]

9. No, the king did

And the native tried to be nice to them -- the Pilgrims had guns, the natives didn't -- not knowing that they were there to steal the land and kill the natives.

[hunter]

6. Terrible truth.

My wife's Native American ancestors retreated into Mexico, escaping the U.S. Army and exile to barren reservations, some of the most desolate in the U.S.A. Southwest. Her father's parents returned as "immigrant" Mexican farm workers. They were not immigrants in any true sense, not to the U.S.A., not to Mexico. They'd arrived her in the U.S.A. thousands of years before the Europeans.

My white ancestors, most of whom were religious dissidents, economic refugees, misfits, and other undesirables, jumped off ships from Europe and ran without filing proper documentation. My own documented, most recent immigrant ancestor was a mail-order bride to Salt Lake City. She didn't much like sharing a husband, or the Mormons in general, so she ran away.

Most of my ancestors claimed to be no enemy of the Indians, but they did homestead and establish mining claims on land in the West after the Indians had been forced off of it.

[Cleita]

8. Very true about the Mexican immigrants who are largely indigenous people.

I'm bi-lingual myself in English and Spanish. I was often called upon on the job to translate for an immigrant worker. I often found out we didn't really understand each other, when another worker explained to me that "Jose" spoke the language of his ciudad and Spanish as a second language. I found this to be true of many of the workers, so I ger really pissed when I hear anti-immigrant slurs.